Enigma, a robotics research startup, has raised an impressive $71 million in a seed funding round led by Index Ventures and Ribbit Capital, with Sarah Guo’s Conviction Partners also participating. The company, emerging from stealth after less than a year, is taking an innovative approach to AI robotics by focusing on how humans interact with robots to develop intuitive interfaces and perhaps a novel robotic intelligence. Enigma believes that controlling robots should be as straightforward as adjusting a car’s volume knob, aiming to simplify human-robot communication and make it effortless.

To explore how people naturally want to engage with robots, Enigma has launched a large-scale public experiment allowing global users to remotely interact with over 100 AI-powered robotic systems. These robots, housed in facilities in Israel and California, perform a diverse range of tasks, including drawing, sword fighting, and basic chemistry experiments. Enigma claims to have designed both the robotic hardware and the AI models entirely from scratch, underscoring their commitment to innovation in the field.

The startup's founders, Jonathan Jacobi and Gal Niv, bring a unique background to robotics. Jacobi, Microsoft’s youngest employee ever, and Niv met as teenagers in hacking competitions and later served together in Israel’s Unit 8200, focusing on cybersecurity research. Although newcomers to robotics, the pair assembled a highly talented team drawn from Israel’s tech scene, including AI researchers and math Olympiad champions, to build Enigma’s novel AI and robotic platform from the ground up.

While Enigma is still refining the ultimate use cases for its technology, it is already partnering with companies in healthcare, logistics, and entertainment, signaling broad commercial interest. The ongoing experiment is gathering valuable data on preferred human-robot communication methods, whether through text, audio, video, or direct manipulation. The team hopes this insight will lead not only to better interfaces but also to new ways of training foundational AI, moving closer to a future where robots seamlessly assist people across many sectors.